The pet furniture market is a crowded one including pet housing or “condos” designed for a wide variety of pets, but most commonly, domestic cats and dogs. Cats in particular seem to need such furniture as a cat has a natural desire to find or create a place secluded from its surroundings providing a sense of security. Such territory is often considered out of bounds to intruders where the cat can find a safe haven secluded from human or other animal intrusion.
Pet furniture has become more sophisticated as time has gone on. This is principally as a result of pet owners becoming more sensitive to a pet's needs and in expressing a willingness to satisfy those needs. For example, pet housing can also include a surface devoted to cat scratching or for supporting appended toys which a pet, particularly a pet cat, would use to self entertain. Not surprisingly, however, the pet furniture market has become increasingly competitive where manufacturing and shipping costs often times determine whether such a product will be embraced in the marketplace.
It has become increasingly apparent that as time goes on, manufacturing has shifted to remote locations where labor costs are less than those in this country. This is particularly true as it pertains to the manufacture of non-technical or relatively low end products which rely upon various unskilled labor-intensive operations. However, as manufacturing has shifted to offshore locations, shipping costs have become an increasingly more significant factor in establishing product pricing.
Typically, manufactured goods produced in Asia are imported into the United States in containerized vessels. These goods are not only manufactured but packaged at Asian factories and multiple units are placed within cardboard containers or otherwise bundled in groups for placement within cargo containers which are, in turn, stacked atop appropriately configured ocean going vessels. The shipping costs per item are dictated by the number of such items which can be placed within such shipping containers as the cost per oceanic passage substantially remains fixed.
Applied to pet furniture, in that the bulk of the volume which such an item occupies is its internal free space defined by the walls of the furniture, it is believed that shipping costs and thus the ultimate product price will be substantially less if shipping volumes could be reduced. To this end, applicant has now proposed pet furniture in the form of a kit of parts which can be shipped in a reduced volume and which is simple enough for assembly by an unskilled consumer at time of purchase.
It is thus an object of the present invention to provide pet furniture which can be produced in a remote location, shipped at a reduced cost and sold as a kit of parts for ultimate assembly by an unskilled consumer.
This and further objects will be more readily apparent when considering the following disclosure and appended claims.